Some more photos of the progress…
This first one is the top on the go bar deck while gluing in the Engelmann spruce braces. Everything is glued up with hot hide glue:
gluingbracesweb.jpg
As you can see in the following photo, the braces are in two layers. Chris told me that this is something he learned from Fred Carlson many years ago. It eliminates the need to try to sand the braces to the shape of the 25 foot radius in the top. The thinner braces simply conform to the top for a perfect fit. Also, the fact that they are laminated gives them a better strength to weight ratio. This allows to carve them thinner and shorter, thus reducing the weight of the top, and improving the mechanical advantage of the strings:
laminatedbracesweb.jpg
And here a photo of the sound port. As the rosette did not quite have enough sound hole area, a side sound port was needed (according to Chris and Jeremy, one to four of these are needed on most Saddle Pals, depending on the rosette design). This is a view of the soundport from the outside of the body. Chris wet the body with naptha a bit to give an idea of how much figure is in this Koa (doesn’t look to bad actually
):
soundportoutsideweb.jpg
And a photo of the sound port from the inside of the body:
sideportinstalledinsideweb.jpg